Friday, February 12, 2016

Vinegar Valentines, or Victorian Insult Cards

Feeling anti-Valentine's Day this year? Well, instead of sending lovey-dovey cards, you can send Vinegar Valentines and insult those you dislike this year! Vinegar Valentines were a popular Victorian tradition of sending offensive cards to your enemies or people you disliked or you thought had done wrong.

According to Wikipedia, these cards were first produced in America as early as the 1840s and really gained in popularity around the turn of the century, and continued to be produced until about the 1940s. In Britain, they were more commonly called "mock" or "mocking" Valentines, and they were even erroneously referred to as "penny dreadfuls" at one point.

They were mean-spirited, sarcastic, and cynical - each card was decorated with a caricature of a certain type of person accompanied by a cruel, insulting poem that usually rhymed. The cards attacked people's appearances, those that didn't conform to social norms of the time, those that acted above their social station, the rude, the lazy, feminists, the pompous, the flirtatious, bookworms, bosses, Civil War surgeons and secessionists, etc. These unflattering Vinegar Valentines were sent out, usually anonymously, around Valentine's Day to condemn the behavior of family members, acquaintances, neighbors, store-clerks, couples, and so on.

Check out some examples of these insulting Victorian Vinegar Valentines below: